No, this class will not be about the band! Instead, we’ll explore some of the most entertaining and challenging fiction written by Southern women writers since the late 1960s. These women came of age during or since the end of segregation and the beginning of the women’s rights movement and offer unique insights into an “age of transition,” as one critic states.

Together, we’ll consider questions such as:

• Where, exactly, is the South? Does it include Texas? How about Florida? Appalachia?
• What does it mean to be a Southerner—particularly a Southern author—today?
• How do issues of race and gender shape our experience of the contemporary South?
• What issues and themes fascinate, worry, and intrigue contemporary Southern women writers?
• How are these writers similar to the Southern writers that go before them? How are they different?
• Where is Southern literature headed in the next century?

We’ll examine the work of a variety of today’s finest authors, such as: Jill McCorkle, Alice Walker, Lee Smith, Connie May Fowler, Tayari Jones, Bobbie Ann Mason, Jayne Anne Phillips, and many more!

NOTE: If you’re looking for a course in Faulkner or Scarlett O’Hara, this is not for you! Beyond Gone with the Wind — this is Dixie Chicks!

Humanities 2999.2
Tuesday/Thursday 6:30-7:45 pm
Dr. Sharon Colley

Questions? scolley@mail.maconstate.edu